Networks provide services to end user devices connected either by wireless or wireline links. Traditional approaches to service establishment and maintenance typically rely upon the definition of a predetermined set of services and service features, and one or more protocols to communicate the request for a selected service from the end user device to the network. With the proliferation of services and service capabilities, end user device types, access technologies, network architectures and network operators, establishing a service definition and signalling protocols to fit all cases is becoming more and more difficult.
In addition, the total quantity of both networks and devices is increasing dramatically, as well as the situations in which these entities are required to communicate with each other. End user devices are no longer tied to a single access point, as nomadicity and continuously connected (“always-on”) mobility are becoming common requirements for communications and computing devices.
The need to communicate over narrow band wireline and wireless, and mobile wireless channels means that increasing the complexity of the signalling protocols is not a good option to adopt. Establishing a communications service between an end user device and a network incurs significant bandwidth overhead and delay, particularly if the exchange involved negotiation. Using bandwidth for signalling means fewer users can be supported, regardless of the access medium, and high set-up delays are often perceived as poor service offering. The latter is a particular problem when trying to sustain a service through the handover of the end user device between different access points. In this case, long delays can easily translate to transient but noticeable interruptions in the service which diminish the usefulness of device mobility.
Current wireless networks—for example IS-51, IS-95, IS-136, IS-2000, GSM, UMTS—use standardized definitions of the services, and the protocols to be used in negotiating service support. The service context support is built into the product offerings based upon the standard definitions. This approach works for the most part because effectively only two services are supported, namely conversational voice, and short messaging (best effort packet data). A number of standards bodies are currently struggling with defining technology solutions that support data service sustainment during handover between networks of different types or networks supported by different operators.
Intelligent networks, such as IN and AIN used client-server architectures and extensive signalling (SS7) to allow the user to request a limited set of network services. Some attempt was made to define a solution for general service application access, using the same client server model and a contract negotiation model.
There are a number of methods whereby networks store customization information at the end users device. In some situations, this information represents the result of a negotiation. WWW “cookies” are used to store application and sometimes relevant user information at the end user's computing device. WWW cookies are notorious for being invasive to the end-users device, and are primarily there for the convenience of the service provider, not the end user.
Telescript (General Magic Inc.) is an object relocation technology (U.S. Pat. No. 5,603,031) that allows objects to be proliferated to other platforms, and then used at those platforms. The primary known application of this technology is for the distribution of application objects to user devices. In short, the technology was used to allow the network to add new capability to the user device. Java (Sun Microsystems Inc.) and Java++ (Microsoft Corporation), also provide capabilities for relocating software objects onto other nodes in a network.
These existing technologies do not provide a solution for inter-technology mobility, nor service renegotiation, nor a solution that permits the end users to negotiate services according to their specific needs, across all forms of access networks, and for any number of applications.
Current signalling model solutions presume a defined set of services and do not typically provide for customization of support for an individual user and the user's preferred applications. This will become more of an issue as the variety of user devices and applications increase. Typical signalling solutions are either based upon the “lowest common denominator” approach or provide specific solutions for each specific service that is to be supported. The former is not user-friendly, and the latter tends to generate an abundance of service specific signalling solutions (e.g. WAP, RSVP, SS7, SIP). In either case, introduction of new, or custom devices or applications is severely impeded.